A recent study
found that churches where pastors know how much is donated and by whom
were more likely to be doing well financially. However, only half of the
3,000 responding congregations (and only 39 percent of evangelical
ones) told the Lake Institute on Faith and Giving that their pastors
knew this information.

... With urbanization advancing, economies expanding, and climate change a concern, Mexico City has emerged as an unlikely environmental example for cities in developing countries suffering similar air quality issues.

Mexico City recorded only eight days with air quality considered "good" in 1992. That compares with 248 "good" air days in 2012, reflecting the success of initiatives to relocate industry, kick clunkers off the capital's streets, encourage cleaner technologies, and expand public transit and cycling options. ...

Talk
about beating swords into plowshares. The mention of drones may conjure
up images of Star Wars-like spacecraft or hell-fire war machines. But
the controversial technology may prove to have its greatest impact in a
peaceful endeavor: farming. ...

... The market for agricultural drones lies in the technology’s ability to
provide farmers with a bird’s-eye view of their land. Historically,
farmers have walked their land to survey it—looking for areas that need
more fertilizer or water. More recently many have begun using small
passenger planes to look at their lots from the air. But since airplane
rental and fuel costs can quickly run into five figures, there’s strong
demand for cheaper alternatives. ...

... “Eighty percent of the utilization,
once we are allowed to have Unmanned Aircraft Systems in the national
airspace, in the first 10 years is going to be in precision
agriculture,” said Michael Toscano, CEO of AUVSI. “You will have a
situation where you can spray crops by a UAS that flies 2 or 3 feet
above the plants. You can control the downwash because you can put the
pesticides on the plants and not in the ground where it gets to the
groundwater.”

“It
sounds trivial but those numbers really add up a lot,” said Rory Paul
of Volt Aerial Robotics. “If we could save farms 1 percent on inputs
like herbicide and pesticide and increase their yields by 1 percent, you
are looking at multibillion dollar savings.” ...

... Such stories were not at all shocking, as a woman's chances of dying
during childbirth were between one and two percent -for each birth. If a
woman gave birth to eight or ten children, her chances of eventually
dying in childbirth were pretty high. The infant mortality rate was even
higher. The chances of a child dying before his fifth birthday were
estimated to be around 20 percent, depending on the community (accurate
records are scarce). In addition to the fear of death or the fear of the
child dying, there was no pain relief during labor, except for whisky
in some places. ...

6. "INDIA will soon have a fifth of the world's working-age population." India's moment

"The average person only wears about 20% of the clothing in his or her closets. Most clothing goes unworn because it's the result of an impulse buy or doesn't fit correctly, Ray A. Smith at the Wall Street Journal reports."

Why has income inequality been rising in advanced economies — it’s not just the US, people — over the past few decades? The economic consensus mostly explains the phenomenon as a race between accelerating technological change and expanding education. And the rise of inequality shows, as JPMorgan economist Mike Feroli puts it in a new report, that the “pace of technological advance has outstripped the ability of the educational system to supply the human capital skills needed to utilize this technology, leading to out-sized earnings gains for those who have such skills (the so-called college wage premium).” ...